Waking Up
by Casix Thistlebane
Summary: It had been six months since the final battle in Sunnydale, and Xander was pretty sure he was still in shock.
1. Only TwentyThree

Disclaimer: Xander and the Scooby Gang aren't mine. They belong to Mutant Enemy, Joss, and Fox. Shelby is mine, you'll meet her later.  
  
Author's note: There's all sorts of stories about the gang post-Sunnydale. I've written quite a few myself. Everyone has different theories, different set ups. Sometimes from story to story. That's half the fun. This was, briefly, going to be an X/F fic, which I blame on an OD of Nwhepcat and Lizbeth Marcs (two fab writers, by the way), but it isn't. It turned out to be pretty much pure Xander.  
  
Waking Up by Casix Thistlebane  
  
It had been six months since the final battle in Sunnydale.  
  
The first five minutes after they stopped the bus at the edge of the crater were the easiest. Thought was only working at half-power, tops, shooting bits and pieces of images and senses in random, chaotic order, making it impossible to reflect on them. The dust rising from the collapsed wreckage, the exhaust of a school bus driven to its very limits and beyond staining the air, imprinting itself the back of his head. The soft ticking on the engine, the glare of the sunlight off the bleached sands. Flashes of bringers and swinging steel, of the ground shaking, the people screaming, the dash for the bus, memories springing out in ambush, only to be swept aside by the feel of the breeze over the band of his eyepatch. He'd been barely able to squeeze out that question to Andrew, his mind wrapped in the gentle haze of shock.  
  
He watched numbly as the others hugged each other, ensuring that loved ones were still safe, whole. Willow and Kennedy shared a fiery kiss by the emergency door, Buffy and Dawn clung to each other, sobbing. Faith found Robin, the new slayers seeking out friendships still newly made, but forged into something much stronger by the heat of the war. He, Giles, and Andrew stood apart, watching, each of them lost in fog.  
  
It wasn't until they'd climbed back onto the school bus, and people started asking, seriously, where they had to go, that the world came crashing back in around Xander and he realized exactly how much they had lost. He saw with startling, terrifying clarity everything they had yet to go through. He had never lived anywhere but Sunnydale, and but for England one summer, neither had Willow. Dawn and Buffy had an entire family structure to be worked out, the former potentials had families in hiding all over the world to find. Not to mention, the slayers. In a population of six billion people worldwide, they could easily be looking at over a million new slayers to find. They were the ones who gave them the power, they were responsible for taking care of the girls.  
  
None of them had a clue as to where to begin.  
  
Eventually they'd gone their separate ways. Many of the young slayers wanted to be the ones to find their new "sisters", many more were intent on going home and protecting their old families and friends from the world they had learned about. Buffy and Dawn wanted nothing more than to start over, somewhere far, far away from any reminders of Sunnydale and everything they had lost there. They soon learned that their father, long absent even after the tragedy of Joyce's death, kept an apartment in Rome, which he was more than willing to let his daughters use, in return for years of neglect.  
  
Giles had it the easiest of the core group. He had a home to return to, one that he'd never really given up, even when he'd lived in California. He quickly returned to England to help the other few remaining watchers rebuild the council into something new, something capable of properly teaching the multitudes of new slayers. He'd offered a place there to any one who needed it, though Andrew was the only one who jumped immediately to follow him.  
  
Willow and Kennedy had set out for South America, searching for shamans and witches in the jungles of Brazil. Still flushed with her success in the mass calling, Willow was eager to learn everything she could about magic of every variety, and the earthy rituals and spells of the South American cultures appealed to her desire to "not go all grrr."  
  
Which left Xander.  
  
He knew that he could follow any of the others and be welcome. Whether he needed to crash with the Summers girls in Rome, or go native in the Amazon with Willow, or join the ranks of the watchers in England, he'd be greeted with a smile, and helped with whatever he needed to make himself a new home, and a new family.  
  
Xander didn't want a new family.  
  
He didn't want much, really. A roof, a vehicle, food. A left eye.  
  
Anya.  
  
Without those last two, he found it next to impossible to settle in anywhere. So he traveled, bouncing from country to country, continent to continent, visiting friends, helping new slayers, basically being a handy-man to whomever needed him. It suited his desire to help, gave him a sense of duty, and never settled into a routine which might remind him of everything they had all lost.  
  
It had been six months since the battle. Six months since they'd stood at the edge of the crater and stared into the future. And Xander was pretty sure he was still in shock.  
  
Xander was once more in England, just returned from a three week trip to Panama. He was tanned and bearded from his adventure, and he sat in the cool, misting rain in the back garden of Giles' London home, wondering where he'd be sent to next.  
  
Three weeks had been the longest he'd spent anywhere in the last five months. He'd nearly settled in, just barely began to think that Panama might turn out to be his home. There was a certain magic there, the canal running through the midst of wild jungle. He'd immersed himself in the culture, but only one thing really stuck with him, and that came from the unit on Panama in his tenth grade social studies class. "A man, a plan, a canal. Panama." It was a palindrome, spelled the same backwards and forwards. One of the few longer palindromes that actually made literal sense.  
  
There was something to that, Xander thought. To being the same no matter which angle you looked at it, backward or forward. Something unique and extraordinary.  
  
There were moments when Xander found himself bizarrely jealous of that palindrome.  
  
He couldn't help but resent them, slightly, for calling him back. But part of him knew that traveling was a part of him now, sleeping on planes and trains, buying guide books and speaking in broken versions of the native language of wherever he found himself. There was something comforting to being a stranger everywhere he went. The people he met, the people he worked with, had no idea about his past, about who he'd loved and what he'd lost. To them he could be anything, anyone. He rather liked that.  
  
He didn't expect to be staying with Giles for more than a few days. Giles himself was often out of the house, working with the council into the late evening, waking before dawn to get back to work. He had given each of them a spare key, and an open invitation to come whenever they needed to, to consider his home their own.  
  
It was exceedingly generous of him, the man who had been so careful when they were in highschool to keep his apartment separate from the hard life they lived, to keep it a haven of adulthood, safety, and quiet.  
  
They'd destroyed that for him after graduation. Xander was continually surprised that Giles had forgiven them for it.  
  
He happened to glance up, and caught a glimpse of the people living opposite Giles, through the curtained windows. The garden backed up against another row house, this one lacking the luxury of an outdoor setting. It was a narrow space, lined on both sides by brick walls too high to really see over without stretching or standing on a chair. The double row of buildings, the ones that lined Giles' street and those that faced the other side of the block, towered over the space, limiting the light that shone through. An enormous tree, possibly an oak, though horticulture had never been Xander's strong point, grew almost against the opposite house. The bare remnants of the construction worker that still lived in Xander's head noted that the root system of the old tree was probably playing hell on the foundation. There were two of them there, silhouetted against the semi-sheer material, a male and a female, the woman older than the boy. A small family, perhaps. They stood only briefly, the woman gesturing behind her, the boy looking back over his shoulder. A conflict, he thought. Then they hugged, and moved away.  
  
And he woke up.  
  
That was the only way he had to describe it, the sensation, the sudden realization that yes, this was real. He was really living this way, the world surrounding him was not just some simple, painted backdrop on a television set. The feeling would settle over him, making him hyper aware of every sensation, for anywhere from five minutes to three days before his mind would settle back into the comforting rhythm of life lived at half-speed. These moments, the terror and pain of wondering whether each day, each breath might be his last, would come flooding back, eroding a whole in his chest where his heart should have been. He'd watch the passersby, and remember that not everyone lived in constant fear of their life. He'd remember the days in his youth, when he, Willow, and Jesse would play adventure games, trying to carve out in their careless childhood this sense of adrenaline and danger.  
  
He'd been an idiot then.  
  
In seven years of living in the darkness of the world, Xander had learned that this was not a feeling to be sought out. It was a sickness, more insidious than the ones that doctors spent years and millions of dollars searching for a cure for. There wasn't, as far as Xander knew, a cure for this. This ache that landed in his chest and stuck to his ribs and his lungs, making him ache for something simpler.  
  
Something normal.  
  
These days, it almost made him laugh, being called the normal one of the Scoobies. There was no such thing in their world. He had a dent in the left side of his face to remind him of that.  
  
The sound of the door to the garden opening surprised Xander; he hadn't thought anyone was home. Whoever was encroaching on his silent contemplation wasn't keen on making themselves known, they stepped carefully and didn't speak. They approached, slowly, on his right side.  
  
It had to be someone he knew, then. All of the Scoobies had fallen into the habit of never coming up on Xander's left.  
  
"Hey."  
  
It was Andrew, standing with the barest remnants of his usual chaotic energy. His hands were settled into his pockets casually, and Andrew rocked slowly back and forth, heel to toe, toe to heel. He glanced at Xander out of the corner of his eye.  
  
Xander grunted softly, wordlessly, in response. He hoped the meaning was clear anyway. Go away.  
  
"I guess you're wondering why we called you here."  
  
"Not really." Andrew said that every time Xander was called back to London. He liked to think of himself as a sort of mob boss, or manager of the Scoobies, now that he'd taken on a permanent role amongst them. Xander let the routine of the conversation lull him back into his perpetual haze.  
  
The garden took on an odd abstractness as he settled, afternoon light filtering through the gray clouds and spitting rain. Xander was used to this, the whole world tended to be pretty abstract these days.  
  
"Well." Andrew turned to face Xander, a grin splitting his face. "You should come inside and find out."  
  
Xander blinked. This was something different. Usually Andrew would get rather quickly down to business, not prat around being coy about what they needed him to do. But Xander was feeling somewhat magnanimous toward the boy at the moment, his presence promising a swift release from inaction, a return to the work that kept Xander sane.  
  
"Alright." Xander stood slowly, following the blonde back in through the kitchen. He could hear voices chatting softly in the front room, female voices, which surprised him, considering the fact that, as far as Xander knew, there were only men living in the London house at the moment.  
  
Andrew stepped aside to let him through the doorway. Xander closed his eye briefly, a feeling of foreboding suddenly sweeping over him.  
  
He stepped over the threshold.  
  
A cheerful shout of "Surprise!" greeted him, and he opened his eye.  
  
They were all there. Giles, Willow, Buffy, Dawn. Kennedy sat on the couch with Rona and Vi, grinning foolishly. Robin and Faith leaned against the far wall, holding hands. Every last one of the girls who had made it through the final battle with them was there.  
  
It was the first time they'd all been together in six months. Xander wondered what the occasion was.  
  
Dawn bounced up to his right side and grabbed his arm.  
  
"What is all this?" He let the words slip from the side of his mouth as he took in the balloons and decorations that hadn't been there an hour earlier when he'd gotten in.  
  
"It's your birthday, dumbass." Dawn kissed him softly on his cheek. "We thought, we've got a birthday and a six month anniversary, both right at the same time. We have to celebrate."  
  
"My–" Xander blinked. He'd forgotten. He'd completely forgotten that it was his birthday, or, indeed, that birthdays existed. He looked over the decorations and the gathered people again. "Wow." He felt an odd expression take over his face, and realized with a start that it was a smile. Had it been so long since he'd smiled that he didn't remember what one felt like?  
  
He thought about Anya, about not having really been with his friends in six months, and he realized it had.  
  
"Open my present first." Andrew thrust a brightly and inexpertly wrapped package into his hand. It was the size and shape of a comic book, which didn't surprise Xander in the least. It had been years since he'd read a comic. He tore open the wrapping.  
  
Transmetropolitan. First storyline, trade paperback. Spider Jerusalem returns to the city after fives years of hermitude in the mountains. It seemed painfully appropriate. He grinned. "Thanks. Thank you," he laughed. "Oh my god, thank you." He grabbed Andrew by the shoulder, eliciting a panicked look from the younger man. He hugged him, tightly. "Holy shit. This is. . . this is why you called me back from Panama."  
  
"We wanted it to be a surprise." Willow was at his side now, grabbing his hand. "We know it's been hard for you, probably harder than it's been for any of us. You haven't settled down anywhere, made a life for yourself. We wanted to let you know that we love you, and we're there for you whenever you need it. Even if you don't know you need it."  
  
"Thank you." Xander's mind swam in shock, but it was a different sort than the haze he'd resided in for so long. He was waking up again, but this time, the ache didn't follow. He looked over the faces of his friends, wondering how it was that even after everything they'd been through together, they could still make him forget everything he had to feel depressed about.  
  
"So," Buffy winked at him from the couch, where she leaned against a man Xander didn't know, but recognized from pictures to be the Immortal, her new boyfriend. "How does it feel to be twenty-three?"  
  
Xander's fingers tightened on the cover of his comic. He knew from the expression on his friends faces that he'd just gone pale.  
  
He'd forgotten more than just his birthday. For the last six months he had felt heavy, ancient, staring at the world through an eye that had seen everything it had to offer, and found it lacking. He thought of the battles, in the library, the old mansion, graduation, the Initiative, Glory's tower, Kingman's Bluff, the crater.  
  
Oh god. He sat down slowly, blinking back tears.  
  
Oh god, he was only twenty-three. 


	2. Perspective

It was quite a bit later that he finally found his way out to the garden. The sun had set, the spitting rain had faded into a damp mist. The plants of the bushes that lined the stone walls glistened in reflected light from the myriad of windows along the block of row houses. Xander walked along the short, narrow pathway to the tree and sat down, taking a moment to feel the damp seep through the seat of his jeans. He leaned back against the tree, wetting his back, and watched the windows of Giles' house, catching glimpses of the lives being lived within.  
  
It was the most he got, these days, of seeing other people's lives. The barest glimpses. Any more than that and he would be reminded of the one he was trying not to live, of the relationships he was slowly breaking so that it wouldn't hurt as badly when they were gone forever. Each of the windows glowed a different color, the blue light of Willow's laptop in one on the second floor (first floor, to the British), a warm red from Giles' study, where his tiffany lamps made reading, for Xander, a strain. Soft amber from an incandescent bulb in Andrew's room. The neighboring houses bore a similar array, colors bled through curtains and lampshades.  
  
The bathroom light flicked on, added a hard florescent white through frosted glass, illuminating the whole patio end of the garden for the five minutes or so that whomever used it.  
  
His own room, on the third floor (fourth floor, to the Americans), a tiny space sloped by the roof of the building, was dark.  
  
He caught eyes with Dawn, briefly, in the kitchen, though he knew there was no way she could see him out here, sitting in the dark. She looked worried, saddened, and he realized that this whole thing, this whole party, was most likely her idea. She really worried about him, he knew that from her emails and letters, the brief snippets of phone calls. The two of them had really become close, that last year in Sunnydale, the two "normal" people in the house. She relied on him, then, to bring her out of her funk. He knew she had hoped that she would do the same for him, with this party.  
  
It was a hard truth to learn, that there were no good birthdays, not in the Scooby gang. It was better not to remind them all that they grew old while the ones they loved didn't. It was best not to remember the childhood they'd lost, growing up in a world filled with evil and death.  
  
He closed his eye. Dawn had made it through the battle relatively unscathed. She still had college to attend, boyfriends to meet, hearts to break. She had her sister. It hurt to think about everything she'd kept, when he'd let it get away.  
  
A foot scuffed along the gravel path. Xander ignored it. He wanted to be alone. He hoped, if he sat still enough, whomever it was would go away.  
  
"Never gave you my present."  
  
The voice was familiar, but only slightly. One of the nameless girls. There was a time, back of Revello Drive, that he'd known them all, at least by name. He'd been the only one who had. Most of the girls loved him for that, sought him out amongst the core Scoobs as the "accessible" one of the group.  
  
He suspected that Giles knew them all better than he did now. Perhaps even Buffy.  
  
"Mind if I sit?"  
  
"Dunno." Xander kept his eye shut. "Is Britain a free country?"  
  
"Don't give a shit if it is."  
  
A flash of something against his eyelid, the smell of burning herbs, then the sound of air rushing through a hollow chamber. When the voice spoke again, it was tight, holding back the smoke it had just inhaled. Xander opened his eye.  
  
She sat on his left, but he watched the gray smoke circle against the colored lights as she finally exhaled.  
  
He knew which one it was. Shelby, from Columbus. Of all of them, he'd have thought her most likely to head off to protect the Other Hellmouth, the one in Cleveland. She'd surprised them all by taking advantage of the meager Council funds, and leaving America behind.  
  
Her voice was tinted, now, by the faintest of accents. She sounded Canadian. He tried to remember which country she'd decided to flee to, he knew it was in Europe. Facts escaped him.  
  
Shelby, from Columbus. Vaguely punk, in the way that Willow was now only vaguely Jewish. A pierced nose, too many earings. Hair cut into a short, asymetrical bob. T-shirts with logos from shows she was too young to remember.  
  
She'd been sixteen, one of the slightly older girls, when she'd come to Sunnydale, quiet in the wake of whatever disaster had brought her out of hiding. The bringers had killed her watcher, like they'd done to so many others, but she didn't tuck into the group the way the others had. She'd always kept herself to the side, watching whatever was going on, never saying much.  
  
At the time that had intrigued Xander, the way Oz's cool, laconic attitude had. At the time he couldn't understand why she would choose to hold herself a part from the rest.  
  
He understood only too well, now.  
  
It figured she'd be the one to come find him.  
  
He had sought her out, about two weeks before the disaster in the vineyard, and found her sitting alone in Buffy's backyard, back against a tree much like he was sitting now, her spiraled blue glass bowl gripped loosely in her ringed fingers, an orange lighter in her other hand. She'd offered him a hit, and hoping to break the ice, he'd taken it.  
  
They say you don't get high the first time, and Xander supposed they were right. The first time, he couldn't understand why she did it. Drugs Were Bad, and he'd avoided them like a good little boy until that moment.  
  
He supposed he'd accepted in hopes of getting to know her better, getting a perspective on what it was like to live in her head. It hadn't worked, but they'd formed the half-beginnings of a friendship that night, sitting under the stars, watching each other's backs against the horrors of the hellmouth.  
  
After the vineyard, after he'd lost his eye and everything had started turning surreal, she'd come to find him. She'd taken him out back, to that same tree, and let him have another hit.  
  
One had turned to five, five had turned to two bowls. They'd finished off her stash, and she'd joked about needing to find a new hook-up.  
  
He'd giggled like a maniac school girl. Every damned thing either of them said had been a laugh riot. They'd talked about philosophy, about vampires, about how Giles had no clue what he was doing with Chao-Ahn and seemed much calmer, albeit much more reserved, now that she was gone. Shelby had come up with some bizarre theories about crosses, about why vampires didn't like them. Something about archetypes, Jung, and shared consciousness. She'd talked about the human mind, under the grips of the demon, how something of mankind's gestalt had crossed over, making the vampires unique.  
  
"Vampirism predates Christianity. Probably Judaism, too. So I'm thinking, is it that they discovered an aversion to crosses after the crucifixion? Or maybe that's the reason the Romans chose the cross for their executions in the first place. After all, it wasn't a special, one time only deal for Christ. They'd been crucifying people for years, the worst thieves and murderers their world knew. Maybe they chose that punishment because they knew that it was a symbol that drove out demons, evil. Maybe they were using it to cleanse their culture of that power."  
  
"What about holy water?"  
  
"How do priests bless the water? They make the sign of the cross over it."  
  
Xander had felt human again that night, had felt young and irresponsible, gloriously so. He looked over at Shelby, watching the lights though half-lidded eyes. Maybe it wasn't too late to get that back.  
  
They passed the pipe in silence several times, the only sounds those of the traffic passing by beyond the houses, and the occasional rib-shattering cough from Xander. His eye was tearing up fiercely, but the world was separating into bits of unconnected moments, and the dull ache left Xander's chest.  
  
"It's my birthday."  
  
He said it softly, the words carrying a hint of melancholy.  
  
Shelby snorted. She flicked her lighter, checking her watch. "Not for much longer, it isn't."  
  
He smiled. The expression still felt strange. He wondered if it would ever feel normal again.  
  
"Mine is in about a month and a half. I'll be seventeen."  
  
Xander's breath caught as she handed him the pipe. He was a moron. Here he was, moping about over only being twenty-three, but most of the people who'd survived the battle had been much, much younger. Seventeen. He could cry for them.  
  
She took a long, large hit off the pipe, then let it all out in an enormous whooof. He turned his head to get a better look at her. She was grinning.  
  
"Think they'll throw a party for me?"  
  
They wouldn't. Shelby had kept herself too separate for that. Without thinking, Xander said so.  
  
"Yeah." She let her head drop, but the grin stayed. "Had a boyfriend for awhile who thought that was the coolest thing in the world, how I would just sit and watch everything. Being an observer, set me a part. Made me mysterious. He didn't stick around long, though. Mysterious only gets you so far."  
  
"Why do you do it?"  
  
"You tell me." She turned to look at him. "You've been doing the same for six months." When he didn't answer, she laughed. It was soft, held no condemnation. "It's easier that way, isn't it. Don't let 'em get too close, then it doesn't hurt so much when they leave. Learned that one early on. Thing is," She swept out her arm, letting the gesture end by handing him the pipe. "It's hard to get that close."  
  
They sat in silence for several more moments while Xander lit and pulled. He handed it back and she took it, held it without lighting.  
  
"Doesn't seem real, does it."  
  
It didn't, but he didn't say so.  
  
"Whole fucking world is like one big, badly written drama. Gets to the point when you don't know what is real, don't know what is normal. You think you're going insane, just trying to figure it out."  
  
"Shell shock." Xander let his head rest against the bark. "Post traumatic stress disorder, or something. I'm told it'll pass."  
  
"Shit." Shelby leaned forward to light the bowl. "I've felt this way my whole goddamned life."  
  
The ache carved itself a nitch in his chest again. He'd been losing his mind, just dealing with six months of this feeling. How could Shelby cope, having felt it all her life? How did you get beyond the feeling that your life wasn't real, to the point of actually living it? He watched the flame touch the bowl. That was how. She lost herself, almost daily, in a weedy haze.  
  
She sat up, her nose wrinkling. "Damn. It's cashed." She tapped the ash out of the pipe, then blew through it to shake out some of the resin. She pulled a baggy, loaded with pot, from her cargo pocket. "Want some more?"  
  
Xander stared at the bag. She'd found a new source, a good one from the looks of it. Of course, with the speed she smoked it, that bag would hardly last the rest of the week. "No, that's okay."  
  
He was toasted. More than that, he was burnt.  
  
"Fuckin' stoned out of your gourd, more like."  
  
"Didn't know I was saying that outloud."  
  
"Didn't have to." She smirked. "You've got to build up a tolerance. I can smoke three bowls of this shit and still be functional."  
  
Xander looked away. How functional could she be, living in the world like it wasn't really happening? He glanced back at the windows. Dawn was in her room now, she got her own since Buffy and the Immortal were sharing. She moved slowly through the amber light. Streaks of red lined her cheeks.  
  
He realized he'd never gotten her present. He hadn't stuck around the party for too long, complaining about jet lag and retreating to his room. He thought he'd better go up there, thank her for thinking of him, for setting up the party. He thought of a million more things he should say to her.  
  
He wasn't sure he could, "stoned out of his gourd" as he was. But tomorrow she could be gone, she had classes to attend in Rome. She was going to get the degree that not even Willow had managed to receive. He knew, from her letters, how much that meant to her. He shoved himself to his feet. "Have fun, Shelby. Thanks for the present."  
  
"Any time." She looked up at him, and he suddenly saw how young she was. He wondered if he'd ever been that young, if his eyes, when he'd had two of them, had ever been so wide and hopeful. "Hey."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"They say they're sending you to Africa next."  
  
This was news to him. He turned it over in his over-cooked brain. It appealed to him.  
  
"Huh."  
  
"Do you–" Shelby turned her head to one side, suddenly shy. "Do you think that, maybe, I could come with you? I've always wanted to see Africa. It'd be fun, like, I dunno, a road trip or something."  
  
"Like we're friends?"  
  
"Yeah." Shelby's eyes shot to the ground. "Like that."  
  
God, he was probably the closest thing to a friend she had in more than a year. "Yeah." He smiled softly at her. "Well, you know, maybe." He shrugged, the grin starting to lose it's strangeness. "For your birthday."  
  
Xander turned then and walked back to the house. He was going to find Dawn, he was going to apologize profusely for having let their friendship wither. They would talk long into the night.  
  
Well, so long as nothing shiny came along to distract his pot-stained brain.  
  
It had been six months since the final battle in Sunnydale, and Xander realized he was awake.  
  
That he could be awake, and enjoy the adventures that Giles was sending him on. That he still had a family, that the world was real, and inspite everything he'd seen, that it could be good.  
  
It had been six months since the battle, and Xander was finally starting to heal. 


End file.
